Circulation Figures

Obedient to act of Congress, the dailies of the U. S. stated their circulation averages for the period April 1 to Sept. 30. Particularly in Manhattan were these figures awaited with impatience. There it was asked: " Has the Daily News passed Hearst's Journal? " " What became of The Globe's 160,000 circulation (evening) when Frank A. Munsey bought that paper and merged it last June with his Sun (evening) ? "

Editor and Publisher devised a chart that told Manhattan's circulation since the Armistice.

The Daily News caught and passed the New York Evening Journal about Aug. 1, 1923: Oct. 1 they stood: News, 633,578; Journal, 601,837. Both papers appeal to the city's gum-chewers. Charted lines of their respective rise and fall in the last six months are approximately complementary.

The combined Sun and Globe showed an average only 50,000 higher than The Sun's average six months ago. Of 110,000 other readers of the whilom Globe, Mr. Munsey's Evening Telegram (upon which he grafted some Globe features) seemed to have attracted 20,000. Evening papers outside the Munsey group thus absorbed 90,000 readers, perhaps 25,000 of whom were accounted for by The Evening Mail.

The Daily News now has the largest public of any weekday paper in the U. S. Its average above given is for the six-day paper and includes strike shrinkage (omitted by several publishers).

Started in the Summer of 1919 by the Chicago Tribune Co., the News reached 250,000 by October, 1920. A year later it was at 400,000. It overhauled Hearst's American the next May at 450,000. It reached 525,000 in October, 1922.

Reason for the sale of the News is found in its tabloid style, small size, picture service, candidly low appeal. Its photographers are either omnipresent or winged. Last week a gangster and a paymaster's guard fought a duel fatal to both; the News' camera reached the scene before the coroner, obtaining a picture of the two bodies as they lay in the street.

When the photographers miss out, the News is undaunted. Casting decency to the winds, it last week sent its artist to the morgue to make sketch-portraits of a woman --who had been strangled by a degenerate.

Circulation figures as announced on Oct. 1 by various Manhattan publishers :

NEWS 633,578

EVENING JOURNAL (Hearst). 601,837

AMERICAN (Hearst) 439,177

WORLD (Pulitzer) 382,739

TIMES 362,361

EVENING WORLD (Pulitzer).. 272,335

SUN AND GLOBE (Munsey).. .236,165

EVENING MAIL 170,327

HERALD (Munsey) 165,710

EVENING TELEGRAM (Munsey) 133,394

TRIBUNE 133,230

EVENING POST 32,506

Of the dailies of the country, it is undoubtedly true that New York's News and Journal stand first in point of circulation. Other big papers are: the Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, Kansas City Star, Chicago American (evening), Chicago Daily News (evening), Chicago Herald Examiner, Boston Post. None of these is consistently below 380,000 in circulation.